Down here in the canyon the air is fresh (Bare Bones Biology 007B) and breathable. When I step outside and take that first deep morning breath, I can feel all the little alveoli in my lungs and all those sinus spaces in my head open up and ask for another hit. It used to be like that in Bryan, but now the air in Bryan challenges all the delicate membranes of the body, and they swell up and churn out mucus to protect themselves.

So I’m still looking for a place to really live in, and I would invest in this place fully, as I did in Bryan, if I thought it would last. Even though it’s not easy.

Over most of last week I had no email communication, no way to drive out of the canyon three miles to a main road, and my cell phone only halfway works, so I got jammed up with messages that I couldn’t receive or answer. Or call anyone if there had been an emergency. The last time I drove out, the day was fine and clear but when I drove back in I could see a an oddly creative cloud in shades of gray, I said I wonder if that is over the canyon. I drove down through the first four water crossings, sun shining, I said I wonder where that thing was? And in the quarter mile to the next crossing the river had risen about 5 feet that no sensible person would cross. I stopped to rescue the neighbors’ dogs that had gotten themselves on the wrong side of the river, but when I came to the last two crossings with a half mile yet to go, I left the Big Red pickup on the road and hiked over the mountain, to stay on my side of the river so I could go home.

It turned out to be two mountains with a big ravine between. I don’t recommend the elk trails; they go straight up and down in the rain-slick clay. But we made it home, Bitsy and I, and we piled under layers of comforters, and slept for another really long night.

In the morning – there is nothing in our world to compare with that first breath of pure outdoor air. And another, and yet another. And with it God’s creation bestows the joy of living.

I have to wonder if most of my friends have ever experienced the sense of joy that comes from breathing fresh air. I remember when everyone had that opportunity. A friend who lives here reports that, when he visited relatives in Wash DC, what he mostly felt the whole time was an overpowering listlessness. Y E S. And then food cravings and once you get past that, if you are more than usually sensitive to chemical contamination, it becomes more violent upsets of the digestive system. And if our chemical atmosphere does that to us humans, plus asthma and mood disorders for the young, emphysema in midlife, and alzheimers at the end, it’s no wonder the whole biosystem is suffering, trying to change back to a healthy balanced Life system.

So here’s the bad news. Last time we made it to town, I learned that there was a big gathering of oil men in Chama, having lunch in a private room at High Country Café. And what I know is that this place too will be destroyed if all the people don’t care about the welfare of all the people enough to:

(a) if you are an oil man, take your leadership skills to the welfare of the community – and don’t fake it – study it:

(b) if you are not an oil man, insist that your communities uphold the spirit and rule of the laws of this country and the traditions of the reservations that are meant to benefit the welfare of our communities. Not the profits, not even the jobs, but the welfare of the future when all these resources are long gone and the oil men have left this town behind, soaking in pollution, and there are no profits and no more jobs for the children of today.